Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2022

Random Power (RaP!): Breaking the Wall to Digital Privacy Protection

Random Power (RAP!)

2022 2022 Winner Science Start-Ups

Nominated by: Mauro Fasano, University of Insubria

Presented by: Massimo Caccia

Random Power (RAP!)

Italy

Unpredictability is usually perceived with a sense of uneasiness and discomfort. However, when it comes to securing our data, posts, pictures and whatever flows to (or from) the internet about us, protection relies on unpredictability. The impossibility for an eavesdropper or a hacker to break the walls protecting our digital life depends on secret keys, protocols and cyphering algorithms, namely the art & science of cryptography. Keys, essential to lock&unlock the doors, must be randomly generated. And true randomness implies unpredictability.

Random Power (RaP!) harnesses the quantum properties of semiconductors to generate a virtually endless stream of random bits feeding cyber-security systems. The principle is embodied in a Silicon device; the source of randomness is endogenous and this is a genuine paradigm shift with respect to existing devices, providing simplification and robustness of the system; quantum properties of matter make unpredictability irreducibly unbreakable.